Is It Really 476 and this is Gibbon's Rome?

Living in the shadow of events here in Minneapolis over the last couple of days, I’m sickened watching POTUS through a series of tweets blame the left and the media for Minneapolis and the rest of the country. His goal isn’t truth. It isn’t honest analysis or national leadership for all Americans. After all, nothing, I repeat, nothing is that simple. Instead, it is an effort to divide and conquer and drive the left against itself and fire up his base. It’s sad that that is the “go to” for him after a cop murders a helpless, shackled man in the street twelve blocks from my house and events subsequently spin out of control out of what ... anger, grief, hopelessness?
Is this what we want as a nation? Is this who we are? Remember this is the same guy who called Nazis in the streets of Charlottesville “good people.” Again, is this what we want? Who we are?
Will we honestly be proud of this window of time in history when we look back upon it? Is this the America we are choosing? For conservatives, is this really what the GOP stands for? I honestly believe that it is not. I get limited government. I get fiscal conservatism. I even get isolationism and trade barriers, trade wars, massive fiscal debt. I may not agree but I get it. But this? So, instead, we target our own people, call vast swaths of them thugs and evil and threaten to set the dogs loose on them? “You loot, we shoot.” Really? Racism is a festering sore that could kill this country and he quotes a famous line in support of it? Again, this is his "go to"? Are we not more than this? We must be. 
I simply don’t believe that that is why we established a country, drafted a Constitution and fought two world wars. When I walked in the streets of Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo with US soldiers of all races, faiths and ethnicities, we were all Americans. When I served in the Agency, alongside colleagues of all races, faiths and ethnicities, we were all Americans. When I stood in the streets in the wake of Katrina or even while covering national campaigns and conventions, we were all still Americans. When I stand in front of juries, I talk about justice, rule of law and about why this system matters, why America matters. Could I even say that now? But if I ask about equality, for justice for all, does that change it? Would that make me unpatriotic, a thug, evil, leftist, rightist? Is this who we are? Who we want to be? I choose to not believe this.
If I’m wrong, then we are already lost, it’s all irrelevant, this is 476 and this is Gibbon’s Rome.